From a laugh to a cry

by Rabbi Pinchas Winston

LAST WEEK’S PARSHA was a laugh. This week’s parsha is to cry for. It’s never easy losing a spouse you love, especially if you had something to do with it. In Avraham’s case, it was the Akeidah that caused Sarah’s death, even though she ended up dying precisely at the moment she was meant to die from the day she was born. We all do.

But as the Gemora says, righteous people, even after they have died are considered alive (Brochos 18a). So the parsha is appropriately called “The Life of Sarah” and not “The Death of Sarah” because, though her body died, her spirit lives on and continues to do so through every Jew that descends from her.

You have to also appreciate the irony of the situation. The son that made her laugh and others with her, whose very name is a reflection of all her joy was the means to take it away from her. The potential loss of her beloved son cost Sarah her life (she died from the shock of the Akeidah), and denied her the chance to stand under the chupah of her son, or see any grandchildren from him.

But that’s life, and that’s laughter. Life is the ongoing daily reality that usually includes some pain or another. There is a reason why anti-depressants are so popular today, be they actual medication or just distracting forms of entertainment. It’s as if something pain-causing is always lurking in the shadows waiting for the right moment of vulnerability to pounce.

Laughter is the opposite. It is not continuous and can be difficult to generate. That’s why “good” comedians make so much money and are so in demand. And even if we do manage a hearty laugh from time to time, it is usually short lived. Even more ironic is how we’re able to manage ongoing pain, but we could never manage continuous laughter. People have died laughing.

But that’s the way it is meant to be. God made the world He did so that man could exist and have free will. This necessitated good and evil, cause and effect, pain and relief. Pain is an integral part of this stage of history because it is the main way a person is pushed to make a choice in one direction or another, to reveal their moxie or spiritual weakness.

It works, as long as it does not kill hope. Hope is that all-important state of mind that drives us in life to accomplish meaningful things and inspires us to get out of bed each morning. If hope goes, so does a person, and few things kill hope more completely than prolonged pain.

But a funny moment? It has the power to restore hope in seconds, like rising above the clouds on a stormy day into the calm, sunny world above. You can’t stay up there for very long, but having been there for even a short while can leave a long, lasting impression, sometimes even years later.

This idea however is even more powerful than most think, something we learn from the holiday of Purim.

On a simple level, Purim celebrates how history for the Jewish people went from being bleak to promising all within a short time. One moment, the Jews of Mordechai’s and Esther’s time were facing genocide, and the next moment they had the king’s permission to fight back. Everything got turned on its head.